BBC Age of Reason: Professor Romila Thapar

A special BBC series, Age of Reason talks to six octogenarians on how the world has changed for women in the last eight decades.

From her home in Delhi Indian Professor of History Romila Thapar talks to the BBC's Lyse Doucet.

When she was a young woman Professor Romila Thapar had a choice—her father could afford a dowry or a degree but not both. Professor Thapar chose a degree and has never looked back, becoming one the greatest historians in India.

Now aged 81 she talks about her early life studying in London and hitch hiking through France in the 1950s. And then later about her work, which has given her an international reputation (but also led to death threats), and also about life for women in India today—have the promises of independence been fulfilled for all of India's citizens?

For copyright reasons we cannot offer this audio as a download. The audio is available via the BBC link below.

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Comments (1)

Stephen Coates :

09 May 2013 10:27:20am

Of course it's the BBC's decision, but I'm disappointed that only women are being interviewed for this series.As for the discussion itself, I have nothing but admiration for Professor Romila Thapar's courage and determination to take on orthodox views of Indian history when her research found to not be supported. But I heard echoes of the research of Keith Windshuttle who found evidence for only about 120 deaths of Aborigines in Tasmania at the hands of European settlers, in contrast to the orthodoxy which preached that there had been 1000s of deaths. I also found some sympathy with the writing of Nirad Chaudhuri who argued that Indian civilisation had stagnated at the time of British colonisation which was not what the orthodoxy was claiming.